The
picture above is a parade of the Top Ten among Japanese family crests,
i.e. their basic designs have been most often used in cranking up other
family crests since before the first thousand years. Besides the 18-petalled
golden chrysanthemum, which is the Imperial Family's crest, the most
widespread crest designs consist of the following (the clans that are
mentioned first are those whose crests are shown as examples of each
category in the main picture above):

Some used
dots to form flowers and such -- like the famous clans under Oda Nobunaga's
overlordship: Maeda,
Kuki, Tsutsui, Hosokawa. The Chiba clan also used dots as flower
petals.

The Rusu,
Nasu, and Kusunoki
clans incorporated a chrysanthemum in their crests, signifying the imperial
DNA in their ancestors' veins.

A few unimaginatively
used kanji,
such as the mighty Mori,
the blunderer Ishida,
and a number of well-known warrior clans like Honda,
Ukita, Hara,
Inoue,
and Murakami.

A warlord's
clan preceded the Meiji to World War II flag: the Ryuzoji's
crest has already been featuring sunrays since 14th century.

Crests
were thought up based on a good many considerations, and a great chunk
of those couldn't survive being rationally vivisected. Handles, for
example, which surround the Akagawa crest, meant good luck being pulled
into the person fluttering the crest. In this case Oda's crest had its
flower petals to resemble handles a bit, too.

Japan has,
until today, a 'flower language' of its own. Since flowers make a lot
of family crests, maybe you'd better check out what every flower means
to the Japanese (click here).

Oda
Nobunaga in pants full of prints of his family crest. Oda's
ancestors were the Taira
clansmen, arch-enemies of the Minamotos.

There are
beautiful samurai crests such as Akagawa's, Taira's,
Nagano's and Yagyu's:

And there
are hard-to-fathom crests like the ones belonging to
the clans of Araki, Hineno, Mogami, and Soma:

There were
complicated and hard-to-emulate crests like the ones
upheld by the Akita, Date, Muneshige, and Tada clans:

And there
were those very famous clans whose crests were much too simple
to forget (and too hard to be seen as crests when stencilled on daily
stuff), such as Kuroda's, Kato's, Niwa's and Takemata's coats of arms:

While
a few warlords of 16th century already fluttered 'modern' and
'postmodern' or 'contemporary' or (in their times) 'futuristic' designs
over their luggage, like the crests of the families of Suganuma, Hatakeyama,
Hojo, Horio, and Ujiie:

The use
of family crests in Japan is usually said to have started in Heian
era (around the year 750), but in real life even when the capital city
of the country was still in Nara (around 600) some people already put
on some crests on their belongings. Even
when Nara didn't exist yet -- the capital was in Asuka, in 500's --
Empress Suiko
has put some symbols on her banners, for a very practical reason: she
went to war a lot, and it was hard for her men to see where she was
any given time in battlefields. She ordered her Generals to do the same
because otherwise she couldn't scold the underachievers in the aftermath
of such battles.

Minamoto
versus Taira clan's final
battle in 1185 started the boom of samurai crests.

The
Imperial crest is put on top
of the gate of Meiji
shrine in Kyoto.

Why did
the Japanese bother to find family crests? Because since the year 500
there were too many noblehouses already, especially those whose daily
biz was loitering around the Imperial Palace but nowhere around the
Imperial succession line.

Princes
#7 and subsequent siblings had to move out of the Imperial House and
made their own families, which in time evolved into clans. Asuka in
late 500's was reportedly already crowded with such noblepersons.

They all
might have had some home addresses far away inland, but they kept mansions
in the capital city, and those mansions were full of retainers, servants,
errand-boys, cooks, dealers, and so forth. Those people might carry
their bosses' (i.e.
their lords') stuff -- carriages, litters or sedan-chairs, oxen, horses,
food trays, vegetable baskets, etcetera in public places and public
events; so the stuff simply must be marked by something as somebody's
property or else -- whatever might happen.

So that's
why in 700's people put family crests virtually everywhere, from carts
to arrows to tiny weeny tea cups.

Oda's
saddle

Emperor's
basket

Fujiwara's
mirror

Matsunaga's
plate

Click
on to the next page for more samurai family crests, battle-banners,
battle-standards, and all the clutter around warlords in battlefields
every time around because of this thing named 'mon'.